During the 2025 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the chairman, founder and chief educational technology scientist of Squirrel Ai Learning, Derek Haoyang Li, discusses with Forbes the research, technology and success behind the Shanghai company’s innovative adaptive education models.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Randall Lane, we're here back at Davos, the World Economic Forum.
00:03We're at Imagination in Action, talking about AI all day.
00:06And we have Derek Haoyang Li from Squirrel,
00:10who was just, Squirrel Learning, just off stage.
00:13I will say, Derek, the crowd was very interested and intrigued
00:17when we pointed out that you were the only speaker from China,
00:20and the moderator asked,
00:22should China be part of the conversation, the entire room raised their hand.
00:25First, let's talk about AI as a global phenomenon.
00:28Everybody seems to be talking about it like,
00:30oh, this country can regulate it, that country can regulate it.
00:33I don't think enough people are appreciating
00:35just the global nature of the technology.
00:38Maybe you could impart wisdom there.
00:41Okay, I think because Chinese have a very good tradition
00:46of learning math very hard,
00:48so I think the Chinese people are very good at AI
00:53and the hard technology.
00:56And also, we all call that Chinese people have a much more subtle feeling,
01:01so we could detect what the consumers, their needs, their feelings,
01:08so we can perfect the product better and better.
01:12So in recent years, actually,
01:15Chinese companies go international more and more,
01:19and better and better.
01:21It's not like BAT time,
01:24they just copied from the US,
01:27and now the Chinese companies have more innovation,
01:32and like Square AI,
01:34we have more than 100 patents already acquired,
01:37and we in some way lead the new technology
01:43and new product function of AI education,
01:46so that I became the chair of the AI education IEEE.
01:52So I think it's more and more opportunity,
01:55and everybody are international now.
01:58Yeah, is China feeling,
02:00like you walk around here and you see,
02:02especially with the Americans, some Europeans,
02:06in the tech community,
02:07it's just an absolute fever right now.
02:09Is that same way in China?
02:12Yeah, in China,
02:14I think everybody accept AI very quickly,
02:19and Chinese people are not care so much
02:22about the privacies and US and Europe,
02:26so the users give a lot of allowance for the companies
02:33so that we could train the model very well
02:38and benefit more for the public.
02:41For example, we donate the account
02:44for the 20% poorest families,
02:48so that I think AI could do a lot of good.
02:51And in China, I think it's like the high-speed train.
02:55The AI is going much faster.
02:58Yes, yes, it's the high-speed train right now.
03:01Yeah, you've experienced that.
03:02Of where all the,
03:04certainly where all the tech investing is.
03:05All right, so tell us specifically
03:07what Squirrel AI Learning does.
03:09You mentioned, of course,
03:10China being very open to innovations,
03:13and also famously being open
03:15to rethinking the education system.
03:17So what does Squirrel do?
03:19First, where did the name Squirrel come from?
03:21Oh, Squirrel is one of the top 10 smartest animals.
03:26I did not know that.
03:27You did not know that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
03:30And also, Squirrel could crack the hardest nuts.
03:34Oh, that's true.
03:35Yeah, yeah, so we want to help the kids
03:37to crack the difficulties in their learning.
03:41And we have a lot of poor kids
03:44who are not good at learning
03:47to become very fast learners.
03:51So tell us what it does.
03:54We build a virtual AI teacher
03:57that interacts directly with the student
04:00without any other teacher's instruction.
04:03So it's kind of like level five autonomous driving.
04:07Most other AI education companies,
04:10they are building AI tool for the school teacher.
04:14So it's like level two, level five technology.
04:17So now we are the only one
04:19who do the fully virtual tutor.
04:22And we have 24 million students already.
04:26And our annual compound growth
04:28in the past three years are more than 100%.
04:31Wow, now is it meant to be a supplement to teachers,
04:35like your own private tutor,
04:37or is the idea you evolved that it becomes a teacher?
04:42I think it's the primary teacher.
04:44I think teacher's role will change dramatically
04:47in the future 10 years.
04:50Teaching knowledge and teaching fundamental textbooks
04:55are not important for them.
04:56They have to change into data analyst
05:00or maybe they will feel very hard in the future.
05:05Because AI could teach a student by their own
05:09and with a more efficient way
05:13because we have a lot of efficacy studies
05:16shows that a student could learn 30% much better results
05:23than the best human teachers.
05:25So what you're talking about is AI becoming the teacher
05:30of kind of the more, the rote information
05:33where the teacher then is teaching people
05:35how to think or how to be a human.
05:39Yeah, actually the school AI virtual tutor
05:42could provoke more thinking for the student.
05:48It's better than teacher.
05:50It's like Da Vinci plus Einstein
05:56plus every super masters together with the kids.
06:01I think if our kids learn with AI super master
06:05from like three years old,
06:07everybody could be 10 times smarter than we are.
06:10Yes.
06:11Well, you mentioned on stage just now on the big stage
06:15how you were arguing that humans' brains
06:19just like our bodies
06:21we're not all working in the fields anymore
06:23or in the factories that we're all as knowledge workers
06:25that humans have gotten weaker.
06:27You made a very, it was a very strong comment
06:31that got the room buzzing about humans' brains shrinking
06:34because AI is doing a lot of thinking.
06:36Tell us more about that.
06:38I think 90% of the human brain will shrink
06:42because before all the technology
06:47make the product that to replace all the human body work.
06:54Yes.
06:54But in the future, in 20 or 50 years,
06:58AI will replace all the human's brain work.
07:01Yes.
07:02So-
07:02So they know what humans do.
07:03Yeah, we do not need wisdom actually,
07:07but we need a brain gym to train our brain
07:12or we will be idiot actually.
07:15But I think I build school AI with a spirit
07:20that knowledge is not important
07:23because knowledge is everywhere
07:24and we can get it, yeah.
07:26Knowledge is a commodity.
07:27Presumably how to think is the value added, right?
07:30Yeah, yeah.
07:30So how to think,
07:33how to, you know, the learning ability,
07:36learning new things.
07:38So I think we have to change dramatically
07:43our education system
07:45because kids are already using chat GPT
07:50to do the homework.
07:51It's kind of like when you go to the sport,
07:55you just use all kinds of, you know,
07:58tools to help you.
08:01That's not right.
08:03When you want to train the kids to run,
08:05you will not want them to ride a bicycle or car, right?
08:09So we have to train the kids how to run,
08:12how to jump, how to do things.
08:14So it should be a big issue,
08:17but nobody noticed that.
08:19That's a big look in the future.
08:21All right, last question.
08:22Where do you see both Squirrel and AI in general
08:26a year from now?
08:27How fast is this all moving?
08:32We are entering the international market
08:34and I think the speed will be very, very sharp.
08:39It's, for example, our growth curve
08:43in the past four years is like this.
08:46The AI makes sense.
08:47How many customers do you have now?
08:49Revenue, you know, give us some metrics.
08:51Oh yeah, we have 24 million customers
08:56and more than 1 million paid customers.
09:01And last year we have 3 billion RMB revenue.
09:07And also I think there's kind of like a big danger
09:14that people are not aware of that.
09:17For example, like you asked me,
09:19if we can do the teaching all along without a teacher.
09:24And also I think that job loss in teacher,
09:30in lawyers, in doctors,
09:32and in all of the other careers
09:35that AI may replace in 10 years
09:38is coming faster and faster.
09:40It's like five years before when AlphaGo came,
09:44we are just like talking jokes about this.
09:48But recently with a large model and the technique
09:53and the AI company in different industry,
09:58I think it's coming very soon.
10:01So I think all of us should think
10:04of how to deal with that,
10:06how to re-skill the people
10:08to make the teacher become like,
10:11they can give emotion, comfort to the kids.
10:16They can analyze the data.
10:19They have to change from carrier driver
10:22to airplane pilot.
10:24Yes. All right.
10:26That's a view from the future.
10:28Some very provocative stuff.
10:29Thank you, Derek.
10:30Good luck.
10:30Good luck with everything you're doing.